For many years it has been conventional to carry out elections for candidates for public office in the United States and other countries by voting carried out on mechanical voting machines which retain tallies of the votes cast for particular candidates and output the results in a useful fashion at the conclusion of voting. This approach is not without utility and has been very popular. However, to replace prior art mechanical voting machines with similar devices would fail to take advantage of recent developments in electronic technology, most particularly in digital computers and the like. In particular a need exists in the art for a programmable electronic voting machine which is provided to election officials and which is thereafter programmed by them for use in connection with a particular election in a particular precinct. Desirably this would be done in such a way that the overall cost of the system to the municipality would be minimized yet in which the results would be achieved efficiently and with a high degree of security of the electoral process and in a convenient manner. Copending application Ser. No. 608,157, filed May 8, 1984 provides such a machine and voting system. Communication between a computer operated by election officials at an election headquarters and a programmable voting machine at a polling place is required to set up the voting machine for a particular election. Desirably this would also be accomplished without use of wire connections. Similarly, the election results must be communicated back to the election headquarters. Desirably this would also be accomplished without connecting wires, and in a way which effectively prevents tampering with the election results.